No need to pan out on the map to work out where exactly this ride took place. Michael Broadwith’s Land’s End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) record-breaking ride is now on Strava.

Earlier this week, Broadwith set a new LEJOG record of 43 hours 25 minutes and 13 seconds – more than half an hour faster than the previous record. Gethin Butler’s record of 44 hours 4 minutes and 19 seconds had stood for 17 years before that.

How much does a rider slow over the course of 43 hours of cycling? Probably not as much as you’d think, going by Strava – but that isn’t really the full story, is it?

You don’t get a sense of it from the KOMs and timings, but the effort really took his toll on Broadwith, with neck pain a particularly big problem towards the end.

“I managed to figure out some cock-eyed method where I was propping my head up with my arm on the aerobar rest like Rodin’s The Thinker,” he said afterwards.

Then, a couple of days later, it was back to more prosaic concerns.